A Blog On Cold Calling

A Tale Of 59 Minutes Of Prospecting

59 minutes.

At 12:45 I sat down, had a quick sandwich and salad, cleaned up my dishes, made myself an espresso, had a piece of chocolate, then sat down at my desk to make 10 calls. That was my goal. 10 calls. Whether it took 5 minutes or 5 days, I hoped to make 10 calls.

It took 59 minutes.

There are times and there are places and there are roles where someone will make 20 “dials” (I hate that word) in an hour. But time and number of calls are such a relative thing.

For example, let’s say the very first call I make is to a person who really really needs my services, and we end up having a terrific conversation. There’s no way after 10 minutes I’m saying, “Hey, listen, this is great, but I have another 19 calls to make this hour so I should let you go for now.”

So in a way, the best hour of calling is a single call that lasts a long time and is a call of a lifetime (that happened once: I made a cold call that ended up lasting nearly two hours and two months later resulted in a 2.1M new client contract).

Another way that how many calls we make in an hour (or day) is relative is in how we are approaching the call. Are we smiling and dialing names and numbers on the other end of the line? “Okay, next on my docket is Patrick at 206.867.5309. Here goes my call.” Or am I taking a few minutes to look at what I know about that person. Where did I get their name? Have I tried calling them before? Why are they potentially interested in me? What is something I can learn about them? Because I do believe much like a poker player might have a tell that shows a bluff, we as business developers have something in our manner and our voices that indicate whether we are seeing the person who picked up our call as a random body to recite our script to or as a human being who is different than the last person we called. It’s those little things I believe that can influence how a (cold) call goes.

With that in mind, it took me 59 minutes to make 10 calls. That’s a little faster than I like (again, how awesome would it be to have it take 8 hours to make 10 calls because each call resulted in a lengthy lead qualification 🙂 ). Here is how they went:

Call 1: A new prospect who according to a quick online search was a sergeant in the military. A super friendly guy actually. We had a nice conversation where he said I could stay in touch but he might not be needing my services for several years. No problem! I sent him a follow up note thanking him for his time, made a note to follow up in a year. Unfortunately “a few years” will be here before we know it (it feels like just yesterday it was 2021!) so I plan to stay in touch with this very friendly gentleman.

Call 2: A prospect I’d tried to call a few times before without success. Today? He picked up! He was nice, told me he wasn’t needing my services at this time but may indeed be interested if a couple of possible scenarios surfaced. I too sent him a follow up note and made a note in my files to keep an eye out for the scenarios he mentioned. Worst case scenario, none of the scenarios surface and I’ll call him and update him in a few months.

Call 3: This was someone I talked to a year ago, he wasn’t interested then but was friendly and said I could stay in touch. I had left a voice mail for him a couple of weeks ago but hadn’t heard back so was just making a quick call to follow up. He didn’t answer and I’ll try him again (without leaving a message) another day.

Call 4: A lead!! He’s interested!! It won’t be right away but we discussed what he needs and why, and I’ll be staying in touch with him. One of the best clients I ever had took two years of conversations like this before we worked together so calls like this give me hope!

Call 5: An ongoing prospect who each time we talk we have nice conversations and she tells me to keep in touch. I talked to her four years ago and then again two years ago.  Last year I wasn’t able to reach her despite multiple attempts, and this time her phone has been disconnected. Ugh. Sometimes what seems like a disconnected phone is actually just a temporary outage, so I made a note in my file and will try again at a later date. If it’s still disconnected I’ll move her from my list. I hope she’s okay.

Call 6: A prospect who I talked to a year ago but who was undergoing some work related issues that precluded her from being a viable prospect at that time. But part of my reason for calling her today was to check in to see how she was doing, because hopefully her work situation has improved. Unfortunately, she didn’t pick up so I’ll try her again at a later date.

Call 7: A few weeks ago, I reached this gentleman but he was heading into a meeting and could only briefly here my story . He asked me to call back in a month, and a month has already passed. He didn’t answer today so I left him a voice mail and sent him an email. Although I favor calling someone back rather than leaving a voice mail, I try to leave one or two voice mails a day, just in case one of them leads somewhere, not unlike buying a scratch lottery ticket.

Call 8 and Call 9: Neither person answered, so I’ll try them again another day.

Call 10: This is a prospect I’ve tried to call 10 times unsuccessfully. I know from my data that after 10 attempts my chances of reaching them plummets. So I left her a voice mail that I tweaked a bit, explaining why I was calling and also mentioning something I liked about her LinkedIn profile. Will I hear back from her? Who knows. But if not I will leave her another voice mail a couple of months down the road. This is a long game, and it’s not every day that someone has a need, and the goal is for them to think of me and remember me as someone who stays in touch but also isn’t too pushy when/if she ever needs our services.

That was 59 minutes. And in those 59 minutes I made 10 phone calls along with two voice mails and an email that for now has led to three conversations and potentially a long-term client. Best of all, I had three friendly conversations, including one where the person told me I sounded like a nice guy so could stay in touch.

We can’t control the world. We can’t control whether someone answers our call and only have some (at best) influence as to whether they’re interested when we reach them. But it’s a journey. A step at a time. A brick at a time. This past hour, I felt like I took three steps, placed three bricks in place. Which isn’t a bad investment of an hour of time. For me, it was a pleasant 59 minutes. Here are to more of those 59 minutes today and tomorrow.

NOTE:

• If you’re one of the people I reached today who is reading this, thank you so much for your time and your friendly spirit. 
• Typing this was a nice 17 minutes mental break after cold calling. Mental breaks are important as a business developer and, for me, writing is a mental break 🙂